Russell Moore: It’s time to take down the Confederate flag

Agree

I will NEVER fly a confederate flag (glad they lost). Moore needs to stop pretending everything is a gospel issue. Worry about something important Moore. Seriously.

[James K]

I will NEVER fly a confederate flag (glad they lost). Moore needs to stop pretending everything is a gospel issue. Worry about something important Moore. Seriously.

Dealing with racial prejudice is always a gospel issue. We see this when Paul opposed Peter in Galatians 2:11-14. Of course, racial justice is not the gospel (like most liberals believe) nor is it integral to the gospel (like many evangelicals believe) however, it is a vital implication of the gospel. We must be careful not to make it irrelevant to the gospel.

[David R. Brumbelow]

I doubt the Confederate Flag had anything to do with the murder of the folks in the Charleston, South Carolina church.
Sometimes when a horrible crime occurs, we don’t need to pass any new laws. We just need to enforce the laws already on the books.

No doubt in my mind that the old school fundamentalists and staunch conservatives will by and large have this mindset. Look at their woeful record on civil rights. It is just par for the course.

GregH, what did the confederate flag have to do with the 21 different shootings so far in Chicago this weekend alone?

[James K]

GregH, what did the confederate flag have to do with the 21 different shootings so far in Chicago this weekend alone?

Nothing of course. That was not my point.

David made the point that the removing of a flag wouldn’t stop gun crime. You more or less mocked that and turned it into a civil rights matter. What exactly is your point Greg?

[James K]

What exactly is your point Greg?

It really isn’t that difficult James. It does require you to read carefully though rather than just putting words in my mouth.

Fundies have a horrific track record with racial issues and being sensitive to racial issues. Basically everybody in the US has figured out that Confederate flags offend African Americans and for the most part, the practice of flying that flag has been abandoned with grace. Only nuts and fundies are still arguing that the flag is irrelevant. Of course, in theory, a piece of cloth is irrelevant but that is not the point is it James? It does actually represent something. So yes, I find the predictable support for the flag from fundies to be insensitive and poor taste.

Well, I suppose you could maybe point out where some fundy then pointed out that the flag was good and not offensive some americans.

What is rejected by David and myself is that there is some connection between the flag and the murderous spree.

[James K]

Well, I suppose you could maybe point out where some fundy then pointed out that the flag was good and not offensive some americans.

For those of you who may not recognize him, this is Phil Kidd, an IFB “evangelist.” He makes a point of frequently being photographed with the Confederate Flag (sometimes, as in this picture, wearing it).

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I have relatives in Alabama, so I get there occasionally. I have seen that it’s not at all uncommon for Baptists in Alabama to display the Confederate Flag.

Does the Mississippi Baptist church goer make it easier or harder for his black neighbor to hear the gospel from him when that neighbor sees the confederate flag flying on the pole outside the church goer’s house and the “The South Will Rise Again!” bumper sticker on his car.

Not a gospel issue, eh?

The question is not whether the flying of the confederate flag in SC caused this shooter to do what he did, but whether the flying of the confederate flag by one who names the name of Christ identifies him, unintentionally or not, with the same basic racism (which of course, in and of itself is wrong) from which a whole range of sins, sometimes including serious crimes, arise.

It’s worth noting that the Confederate flag is implicated in the Charleston atrocity—the alleged perp’s Facebook site was covered with it, as well as the old Rhodesian flag and the apartheid-era South African flag.

And while I understand that for many, the “Southern Cross” is simply in honor of a refusal to bow down to unjust authority, and that there are some things that Confederates did that are honorable—Lee integrated his church after the war, Jackson illegally started a school for free blacks—the ugly reality is that after 150 years of supporting slavery and Jim Crow under that banner, you might as well just write some epithet involving the “N” word on your sheet and fly that for all it does to reach black people for Christ.

Or, for that matter, for all it does to reach white people for Him. Really, if General Lee is more important to us than Christ, we got problems. If you want a flag to show your rejection of unjust authority, try the Gadsden Flag.

The shooter (I’m intentionally omitting “alleged”) with the Confederate Flag in one hand and a gun (the gun he used?) in the other.

The young white man who murdered the black folks in the AME church has been arrested.

It is reported that he confessed to his crime.

He will be tried, and probably given the death penalty.

Assuming he is guilty, I believe he should get the death penalty.

Would it help if at his execution they also burned a confederate flag?

Again, we already have laws on the books to deal with people like this young man.

Why not just let the law run its course?

And instead of agitating for new laws (“never waste a crises”), maybe we just need to grieve, encourage, support, love, and eventually forgive.

Some in the victimized church have already been glowing examples of this.

David R. Brumbelow